


Anabasis

by KivaEmber



Category: Persona 5, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Akechi Goro Needs a Hug, Akechi Goro is also in hell, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Persona Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death Fix, Crossover, Demi-Fiend Goro escaping Hell: the fic, Emotional Manipulation, Existential Angst, Implied Relationships, M/M, Mutual Pining, Persona 5: The Royal, Post-Persona 5: The Royal, Shadow Operatives, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25317160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber
Summary: "Death's vastness holds no peace. I come at the end of the long road."or;Akechi gets a second chance for aproperresurrection after the collapse of Maruki's false reality. Unfortunately that second chance requires him to claw himself out of hell.Literally.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 35
Kudos: 260





	1. Demi-Fiend

Demi-Fiend tripped over a corpse. 

This wasn’t an uncommon thing. When you’re waging an eternal war against the Great Will, corpses tend to feature strongly in any given landscape. World by world, reality by reality, he was carving a slow and steady path to his main enemy, and that path was built on the bones and bodies of humans, demons, angels, and fucking whatever in between. Tripping over a corpse in the space between worlds wasn’t really all that weird. 

What was weird was that the corpse groaned - rendering it a not-corpse - and that it was human. 

Demi-Fiend paused to consider the human. He looked young, pallid and pretty much on death’s door. His soul was a stubborn little flicker though, fighting against the gentle pulls of the Sea of Souls swirling around them even as it dimmed and swallowed up its light. This human was very far from home, very lost, and very fucked. 

An impulsive idea bloomed. 

He crouched down and observed the human up close. He was dressed weirdly, a striped jumpsuit with a mean looking chin-guard. Human fashion developed in strange directions nowadays. 

Demi-Fiend reached out, curling his fingers around the human’s chin and tilted his head from side to side. There wasn’t much resistance. The human really had one foot in the grave - still stubbornly clinging despite there being no hope. So much grit and determination, and for what? Nothing, really. It’d be a waste to lose that, just because the human had the poor luck of tumbling into this forgotten crack between worlds. 

Was this how Lucifer felt, all that time ago? The thought of it made him snort. 

“Hey,” he commanded, grabbing that stupid chin guard and violently shaking the human, “Wake up.”

The human woke up in sluggish stages, his limbs twitching and his eyes fluttering open. They were beautiful eyes, shifting from amber to crimson in the undulating light of the Sea of Souls. Demi-Fiend could glimpse tempered madness in there, reminding him viscerally of Chiaki, a heart so consumed with a hunger for strength and independence, that…

The human jerked in his grip, voice cracking as he rasped; “ _Loki_ -”

Ah, the heart _swelled_ , and from it burst a- what? Demon? Demi-Fiend peered up at the strange entity looming over them both, futzed at the edges, already losing substance. The human was too far gone to sustain this odd projection. What a power - to claw together the darkness in your heart and manifest it as a monster with claws and fangs and malice. Demi-Fiend memorised the brief flicker of that savage heart - Loki, was it - the thin limbs, fiery hooves, red fanged smile and the long braids. Beautiful. Demi-Fiend kinda wanted it. 

“You’re too weak for that,” Demi-Fiend informed the human, who was too busy gasping out curses; all bluster to cover the fear in his eyes. Understandable. Animal instinct became overwhelming when you were this vulnerable. 

“Who… the _fuck_ …” the human coughed out. His eyes were already trying to flutter shut. 

“It’s rare to see a human as stubborn as you,” Demi-Fiend said, “Most of them die when they’re this lost in the Sea of Souls.”

The human bared his teeth like a feral dog, and those eyes opened again, blazing red. Definitely a Chiaki; “I- _won’t_ , just, _die.”_

“It’s inevitable at this point,” Demi-Fiend told him honestly, “You haven’t got long left.”

The human glared at him, defiant and furious, even as his breaths audibly wheezed and scraped his lungs. Demi-Fiend met that gaze head on with a tiny little smile, and knew _exactly_ what he was going to do. 

It’d be a waste to leave the human here to rot. 

Demi-Fiend will give him a gift, much like Lucifer did to him all those lifetimes ago. What the human did with this gift was up to him, and if he died, then oh well, he died. If he lived, then it’ll be interesting to see where the human’s tempered madness led him. Back to the human world? Maybe he’d get lost and end up in Amala, scrapping with Lucifer’s minions. Or perhaps he’ll follow the natural migration of the demons towards the Great Will, fighting and dying as any bog standard foot soldier in Demi-Fiend’s endless war. 

Either way, could be fun to watch. 

“You know what, you caught me in a good mood,” Demi-Fiend said, “I’m going to help you.”

The human did not look reassured. Good. He knew there was a catch. 

“You might thank me for it, or curse me, I don’t care,” Demi-Fiend said, and he tapped into his internal ‘hammer space’, as he dubbed it. He felt generous, and he had a feeling this human was going to need a bit of a handicap, so he allowed Kailash to wriggle from his internal space and into his hand. The Magatama uncurled, its serrated pincer jaws opening wide and barbed tentacles wriggling. The human beneath him went rigid in terror. 

Good. His instincts were _sharp_. 

“This will hurt,” he told the human, “But only for a moment.” 

And he dropped the demonic parasite onto the human’s face. Miraculously, the human found enough air to _scream_ , almost drowning out the wet, crunching noise of the Magatama burrowing through his eye and towards his brain stem. 

Demi-Fiend kindly held his head still. 

* * *

He also kindly dragged him to the closest stable reality and left his unconscious body there. 

* * *

Goro woke up with a strangled cry and a migraine from hell. 

Glaring crimson light half-blinded him, sending jolts of agony crushing against the back of his eyes. He breathed through the nausea, squeezing his eyes shut and dazedly taking stock. His brain felt like something had sent it through a blender and it was now oozing out of his ears. His cheek was pressed against a cold, hard ground, and when he tried to lift his head his shoulder and neck muscles went into spasms. 

Okay, no moving just yet. 

His memories felt hazy, but he managed to marshal them into some sort of coherent order. They defeated Maruki and - presumably - the universe remembered that Akechi Goro had died and booted him somewhere else. After that it was a blur, of falling, of drowning, of feeling his heartbeat stutter and stall while he desperately tried to fight through, then-

 _(“I’m going to help you.”_ )

...then.

The pain was starting to ease now. Goro could breathe easier, the migraine dulling into a more manageable headache. His vision cleared enough to see glaring red walls with embedded veins, thick globes of what looked like blood pulsing through. Mementos? But, how, it was… destroyed…?

Squeezing his eyes shut against the rush of dizziness, Goro forced himself to sit up. His head felt weird, neck painfully stiff, and he lifted a hand to rub it-

His fingers hit something solid- something he _felt,_ a phantom pressure that zipped down his spine and to the base of his skull. He flinched, freezing for one long moment, before he touched the strange solid thing again. It felt smooth, like keratin, his skin overlapped the base of it, and when he pulled on it he felt a prickling pain like trapping a nerve, implying that _whatever the fuck it was_ was solidly embedded into his fucking _neck vertebrae._

Don’t panic. Don’t. Panic. 

Goro opened his eyes, blowing out a shuddering breath, and looked down at himself-

_fuck._

He didn’t think of anything for a long moment, expression blank as he stared at his hands. They were marked with thick, dark tattoos that wound intricately over his fingers, his palms, over his wrists, up his arms, to his chest _where are his_ **_clothes!?_ **

“What the fuck,” he hissed, clutching at his hair and fighting down the bubbling urge to laugh hysterically, “What the _absolute fuck!”_

Okay. 

OKAY. 

OKAY!

First thing first: clothes. 

He wasn’t entirely naked. It looked as if his jumpsuit had been torn off from the chest up, the bottom half clinging to his lower body by what seemed like prayers and magic. His belt was doing nothing to keep it up, that was for sure. He also realised the tattoos on his body were glowing but he was just - going to put that aside for now. He can only deal with so many things at once before he imploded. 

He pressed his hands against his face. No mask. 

He _was_ in the Metaverse, wasn’t he? The walls were pumping blood for fuck’s sake. 

Goro reached into his heart, calling for Loki. The Persona responded, but it was _clumsy_ and weirdly painful. The more he tugged on Loki, the more his head felt like it was going to split open, an alien, invasive feeling of something squirming in his fucking _head,_ sharp pain shooting through his jaw and up his temples-

_(above him, the creature dropped a writhing worm on his face and)_

Fuck fuck no no nono-

Goro’s hands flew to his head- no wounds, no evidence of that _thing_ eating its way through is damn _eye socket_ . He still had his eyes, didn’t he (he pressed against his eyelids yes, both were accounted for)? Had that been a hallucination? No, no it- that creature must’ve- _fuck._

There were too many things his brain was trying to freak out over, so he just bottled everything up and decided: find out where he is, find a safe corner, and _then_ gibber himself into a hysterical fit. 

After doing the metaphorical act of gathering up his panic and stuffing it under the bed, Goro negotiated with his limbs enough to stand up. His sense of balance felt weird - probably due to the horn now _sticking out of his fucking neck_ \- and he rolled his stiff shoulders as he properly took in his surroundings. He seemed to be in some corridor of some sort, the walls pumping blood, the air tasting faintly metallic. The architecture - or, as much architecture as vein walls could have anyways - was different to Mementos. A deeper part of it, perhaps? Or a new Palace or…?

Goro looked both ways of the corridor before picking a direction and walking. It didn’t take long until he encountered a Shadow. 

It was a Pixie of all things, though he got a prickling sense of _warning_ from it, like he did when encountering powerful Shadows. She had been amusing herself making sparks between her small hands until she spotted him, whereupon she made a delighted noise and zipped over, inspecting him from different angles before he could so much as snap out a warning. 

“Now, this is nostalgic!” the Pixie chirped, finishing her inspection and fluttering in front of him, “You look just as flabby and weak as my master did, way back when.”

Did this Pixie just- “ _Flabby?”_

The Pixie giggled mischievously, doing a cute little flip in the air and landing in a lying pose, her wings fluttering as she cupped her chin in both upturned palms. 

“I bet you’re super confused and stuff, huh?” the Pixie said, “Well, let me, Pixie, give you some exposition! Due to the generosity, the _kindness,_ the _mercy_ of my master, you’ve been granted a second chance! The catch: you’re stuck in the bottom of the Labyrinth of Amala and need to fight your way back to your boring ol’ human world.”

Oh. Is that all.

“What is the… Labyrinth of Amala,” Goro asked detachedly.

“It’s where the demons live!” the Pixie giggled, “I think you humans call it ‘Hell’ or something.”

So. Goro was in Hell. 

He felt something settle in him like that, a relief at receiving a punishment he had been impatiently waiting to be over with. He had died, obviously, and Fate saw fit to kick his disgraced corpse into this pit to suffer some more. Fine, he can roll with that. 

“Anyway,” the Pixie continued, “My Master found you all gross and half-dead out in some place somewhere, and thought you should have a fighting chance. So, he gave you one of his Magatama and left you here! Everything else is up to you!”

“Up to… me?”

“Geeze, you’re so slow,” the Pixie snorted, “Yes! Up to you! You can, like, fight your way through the Kalpas until you find a path back to your world - this place is like a nexus, y’know? All worlds lead here, so you just gotta find the right path. _Or_ you can stay here and, like, I dunno, play bloodsports with all the other losers. _Or_ you can just go and die, hahah~”

What wonderful choices. Goro was overcome with indecision. 

“Am I not dead?” he asked blandly, the situation not quite sinking in just yet, “What would returning to my world achieve?”

“Uh, did I _say_ you were dead? I just told you my master saved you!” the Pixie crossed her arms and gave him an irritated look, “If you get back to your world, it’s like, a free resurrection! That’s a bargain if I’ve ever heard of one!”

So, if Goro fought through hell, found the path home, he’d… resurrect? Be alive again? If he sweated blood, tears and effort, he could claw his way back to life, and… what? See Akira again? If he even wanted to see him again. He wasn’t sure, but the idea was there, planted in his mind. Goro wasn’t going to meekly stay here and suffer. If there was a path home, he was going to grab that with both hands and not let go. 

Just one small thing. 

“Do you know what happened to me?” he asked, gesturing to his body, “All… _this_ isn’t - _normal_.”

“Oh, that,” the Pixie shrugged carelessly, “Well, you were screwed as a human, so my master turned you into a half-demon instead. I dunno how that’ll translate in the human world, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Oh. 

“Oh,” Goro said faintly.

“Anywaaaaay, I need to get going,” the Pixie said, “I promised my master that I’d give you a quick explanation, since he didn’t get one when this happened to him. Good luck, and don’t die too fast! It’ll be boring if you do, heehee!”

With that, the Pixie vanished after a cute backflip and a wink, and Goro was alone. 

In Hell. 

As a newborn demon, apparently (????). 

“Well,” he said to the empty corridor, “ _Well._ ”

He really needed to find that safe corner to gibber in because. 

What. 

_The fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this idea wouldn't leave me, so here it is! slow updates, most likely, but the end game is shuake and akechi working very very hard for it. also demi-fiend akechi au, i wanted it.
> 
> btw, if you're unfamiliar with smt: nocturne, this is the 'becoming a demon via magatama' process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNqL01KWO8c


	2. The Man in Black

Goro’s scheduled mental breakdown was put on hold when he was ambushed no less than two minutes after Pixie’s departure. 

A Hresvelgr Shadow unpeeled from the darkened shadows of the hallway’s ceiling with a challenging shriek, which snapped Goro into an instinctive combat mode that shoved all of his panic and confusion into a quiet corner to be dealt with later. He dropped into a defensive roll just as the bird Shadow swiped at where his head had been with razor sharp talons, a blast of freezing cold air following in its wake as it swooped up high once more. 

Just his luck.

No, really,  _ just his luck. _ His mind was already flicking to his mental profile on the Hresvelgr Shadow: immune to Curse, it repelled Ice, and weak to Fire. Perfect. Loki had an Agidyne with Hresvelgr’s name on it. 

“ **Loki** ,” he snarled, rising to his feet as his hand came up to his face in hard-worn habit, “ _ Incineraaaaaah!” _

His vision flashed an agonising explosion of  **_white-black_ ** when something inside his brain  _ writhed. _ His head snapped to the side from the force of it, a strangled scream catching in his throat as he clutched at his hair. Loki burning in his heart spluttered, and he felt as if he was caught in two opposing forces - Loki’s fire bubbling up like lava in his windpipe, and the invasive  _ writhing _ clawing against the inside of his skull, each sensation trying to violently repel from each other while still remaining in the confines of his body. 

He only just held back the urge to vomit from the disorientation of it all. 

Past the bizarre and unnatural colours flashing in his vision from this onslaught, some primal part of Goro’s brain  _ not _ getting shredded shrieked a warning. He wildly flung himself sideways, smacking head first into the wall when the bird Shadow made another swooping attempt at him, and he frantically shoved Loki down, down down down, into the furthest depths of his heart so that clawing sensation in his head  _ stopped. _

It did, though it left a ringing migraine in its wake that half-blinded him with tears. Okay, not so lucky then. He couldn’t even use his damned Persona…!

“ _ Fuck, _ ” he rasped, using the wall for support as he tilted his head up, just in time to see Hresvelgr’s wide wings spread in the preparation of a spell. The air hazed, tinged blue, and Goro just stared blankly at his impending doom, in no shape or will to even attempt a dodge.

“This might as well happen,” he said in some strange dissociative state.

The Bufudyne came smashing down on him with all the fury of a thousand winters.

* * *

_ (self-preservation instinct acted without conscious input.  _

_ through the haze of pain, hot blood spilling past splayed fingers trembling against his chest, his cognitive self crumpling as the shadows advanced, goro’s primal instinct lurched to the forefront. a dizzying burst of energy, of loki rearing from the depths of his heart and striking the floor of the ship, clawing a hole and scrambling through and-  _

_ to slip between the spaces  _

_ of cognition _

_ a glimpse of something vast and beyond him, before something reached out from the void and-) _

* * *

Goro woke up once more feeling like shit. 

“Hngh,” he managed, cracking his eyes open through sheer force of will. The floor looked different - more black and white mosaic tiled than the strange, squishy floor from before - and the light was practically non-existent. The only source of illumination came from his tattoos, and the air had a faint burning sensation like inhaling bleach. 

His limbs ached when he forced himself up onto his hands and knees, a puddle of water beneath him. He vaguely recalled the Bufudyne slamming into him and thought- frozen? Had he froze and- what? The Shadow left him? Didn’t deem him worth the effort of finishing off?! 

He didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved he was alive. He settled on ‘aimlessly angry’ instead. 

“This is _bullshit_ ,” he snarled hoarsely, slamming his fist into the ground. The chilled water splashed, sending droplets flying, the sting of cold harsh against his cheeks. He punched the puddle again, harder, faster a strangled, raw noise building in his throat as his own inadequacy threatened to crush him. Weak. Weak, weak, _weak,_ ** _weak!_** Even when being transformed into a _fucking_ ** _demon_** he was so pathetic-!

“There’s no need for such childish displays.”

Goro froze at that soft, sibilant tone, panting harshly as he stared at his distorted reflection beneath him. The water dripped off his cheeks casting harsh ripples across the cold water - a glint of inhuman eyes twinkled over his shoulder.

“But that anger is good,  _ very good.  _ So raw, so... _desperate_ _.” _

The flick of a serpent’s tongue against his nape, where the horn met skin. 

Goro practically  _ levitated;  _ he launched himself so quickly to his feet, lunging into a defensive crouch with an embarrassing, too high-pitched shout. Laughter nipped at his heels as he spun around wildly, seeing nothing but darkness - a suffocating, crushing darkness that felt  _ living,  _ the noise of scales against stone, the hot, damp breath of a predator against his back. 

“Who the fuck are you?!” Goro snapped out, frantically shoring up his aggression, teeth bared and fingers half-curled as Loki stirred in his head - pain,  _ pain _ , his brain felt as if it was going to split in  _ two _ \- but he maintained it, breathing harsh and water drying against his too-warm cheeks. 

“You’re too much bark to be intimidating to demons,” the voice murmured, “There’s not enough…  _ bite.” _

Pain blinded him. 

Goro howled, a nauseating noise of breaking bone chasing the burning agony that erupted from his shoulder. In the disorientating confusion, his free arm wildly lashing out at his attacker, some detached part of his brain noted:  _ snake, big, ah, its trying to bite my arm off.  _ Odd, irrelevant details of  _ brown, _ and  _ red _ and  _ yellow eyes _ and the raw, animal instinct of  _ rip your arm off escape escape escape! _

“ **_LOKI!”_ ** he screamed, too shrill and panicked.

Loki came -  _ Loki came _ \- but his skull felt as if it splintered apart from the effort, the pain slamming between  _ shoulder _ and  _ head _ and  _ heart ahhh ahh it’s  _ **_burning_ ** ,  **BURNING** , a kaleidoscope of colours sunbursting in his vision and  _ LAEVATEIN,  _ a hot-spurt of fluid spewing down his body as the blade landed true, severing the snake’s head and - on his knees, blood slick and hot between trembling fingers, white of bone, and Loki dissolving in a putrid flare of black flames and choking smoke, his breathing strained and loud-

“Ahhh… so  _ that’s _ why he chose you.” 

That soft tone, but no longer sibilant, louder, purred just above him. Goro barely had the energy or focus to  _ flinch, _ lashing out wildly with bloodied fingers as he tried to scramble back - space, space,  _ space _ , he needed to - but, a strong hand snatched his wrist, holding it, thin bones bending from the force, but not quite painful and-

A man in dark funeral clothes leaned over him, his face half-concealed by a black veil. In the split-second before the man looked down at him, Goro glimpsed grey, grey eyes, soulful and familiar, peeks of black curls escaping the veil, the cut of the jaw and the shape of his mouth, familiar- but, what-

“ _ Akira…? _ ” Goro croaked, genuinely too skullfucked with pain and confusion to even react anymore.

The Man in Black smiled. There was a smudge of blood in the corner of his mouth. 

“If you wish for me to be,” the man murmured, and he knelt down, taking advantage of Goro’s shock to cup his chin and tilt his head from side to side. His vision went spotted red-black, an agony too deep to be physical spearing from the base of his skull down into his chest cavity. He wrenched his chin free, and fought not to throw up from the smearing mess that reduced his vision to.

“My Master was curious to see the creature the Demi-Fiend thought worthy of saving,” the man said, and hearing the word ‘master’ pass from this Akira lookalike made Goro feel disgusted and nauseous, “What a  _ beautiful _ amalgamation: Persona and Demonhood. To paraphrase Hegel,  _ ‘advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis’. _ You currently embody both.”

The silence settled like a funeral shroud around them. It felt as if Fate was leaning too heavily on one side, and Goro was too weak to fight against the pull of gravity. 

“...the fuck are you talking about,” Goro rasped, fighting the vertigo pull of unconsciousness. He was still bleeding out, Couldn’t this Akira lookalike leave him to die of bloodloss in peace? 

“Merely musing what  _ synthesis _ will occur once you grasp both powers well in hand,” the Man in Black said, “Currently, your heart and body are at war with one another. Your  _ Magatama _ rejects the projection of your Persona, for it is a human heart and soul personified, yet your Persona rejects the  _ Magatama _ residing within you, causing you physical agony. Thesis, and antithesis. Either one will triumph over the other, or a successful synthesis will occur between the two opposing forces.”

The Man in Black reached out. Goro weakly recoiled, but his shoulder was easily caught. The man only wore one glove, Goro noticed dizzily, and his bare hand touched his gaping wound, fingers cold and strangely soothing. Goro belatedly recognised the healing warmth of a  _ Diarahan. _

“For that synthesis to be possible, you must be tempered,” the Man in Black’s mouth curved into a familiar, crooked grin, “Think you can survive the journey, Crow?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Goro hissed out, slapping the man's hand from his shoulder before the  _ Diarahan _ finished. The worst of the wound was sealed up, but it still oozed dark blood, the biting pain between his temples speaking of weakness brought by bloodloss. He refused to be pitied - or manipulated - though, so he bared his teeth at the Akira lookalike, daring him to try again. 

The Man in Black just smirked. Joker’s grin. 

“That’s the spirit,” the Akira lookalike said, and rocked to his feet, “Have fun escaping this Kalpa, Crow.” 

The darkness thickened, and it swallowed the Man in Black up, leaving Goro completely alone. 

_ “My Master and I are always watching…” _ the man’s disembodied voice lingered, sibilant and soft in the back of his mind,  _ “So don’t die too fast, okay, Crow?” _

“Fuck off,” Goro gritted out, and he didn’t know if his throat was tight with raw, incandescent rage, or homesickness. 

The Man in Black laughed, and it was identical to Akira’s. Then silence came, and once more, Goro was alone in the dark, utterly lost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, the Man in Black = Lady in Black, ha. ha ha hahahaaaaa a 
> 
> also SMT NOCTURNE HD ANNOUNCED FOR PS4 AND SWITCH AND SMTV WE ARE EATING GOOD FOOD TONIGHT IN THE SMT FANDOM!!!


	3. Magatsuhi

Time moved strangely here. 

With no clocks and no sky to track the hours or days, Goro felt more and more disjointed from reality the longer he meandered in the bizarre, physics-defying hallways and chambers of Amala. Since his disastrous battle with the Hraesvelgr shadow (demon?), he skulked like a rat in the shadows, avoiding the more powerful enemies and ambushing the weaker ones just to vent his frustrations or keep his bruised confidence up. 

It was humiliating. Goro used to be _powerful,_ and now here he was, a _scavenger,_ picking on the weaklings while their backs were turned because a head-on charge was suicidal. With his Persona locked away from him, the only means to fight were his fists which, okay, his demonic body made them very dangerous fists but… 

Even though it was cathartic at first, even he could get bored of punching to death what felt like the millionth demon.

 _“_ Ugh,” he grunted out in a total deadpan, slamming his fist one last time into the pulpy remains of the Oni he ambushed. He thought a weaker demon with a natural resistance to blunt force trauma would be mildly interesting, but instead it just turned the battle into an agonising slog. 

Demons, unlike Shadows, didn’t immediately break down when they died. Shadows tended to melt into a black, sticky ooze that evaporated, whereas demon corpses (?) tended to linger. They didn’t _bleed_ or have viscera _,_ but their bodies slowly deconstructed into some strange material like wet sand, bright red and fizzing with an energy that both repulsed and attracted him. Several times Goro had to tamp down on a disturbing urge to eat it. 

Speaking of eating: he wasn’t hungry. 

His sense of time was all messed up, but at the _very least,_ Goro suspected he had spent a week in this hell, and in all that time he didn’t get the tiniest of hunger pangs. No thirst, no urge to sleep, no need to piss or shit or anything. He was a perpetual engine of motion, just moving, constantly, walking circles in this realm with no idea of where he was going. Fuck, he wasn’t even _fatigued,_ despite fighting continuously - no sore muscles, no exhaustion, not even the bruises he definitely should have from his tussle with the Oni were aching. 

He felt fine. Neutral. Neither satisfied or dissatisfied. He just existed. 

It was… unnerving. Humans were always driven by some base need: survival by having shelter, food, a safe place to sleep, and Goro had none of those now. His only drive was getting out of here because… Akira? Because there was nothing else to do? Because if he stayed sedentary, it was only a matter of time before one of the more stronger demons squashed him like the pitiful ant that he was? 

Goro huffed as the same questions he’d been asking himself at the very beginning of this drama chased themselves anew in his skull. He stayed squatting over the crumbling remains of the Oni, raking his fingers in the wet-red-sand-stuff the demon’s body decomposed into. It smelled, oddly, like Leblanc’s curry - or coffee, it oscillated between the two, the red glitter drawing his eye with a near hypnotic effect. Yet, at the same time, it felt slimy to his fingers, disgusting, and prickled in a way that made all his hair stand on end.

It attracted and repulsed him. 

…

He really wanted to eat it. 

Before, Goro would shove that urge aside, but this time he let it linger, rubbing a few of the sticky granules between his fingers. It was the closest thing to ‘hunger’ that he got in his place, and it made him curious. Besides, who was gonna judge him? The _demons?_ Fuck, he was already in hell, what were they gonna condemn him for - cannibalism? Demon cannibalism? Was that even a thing? 

“I think I’ve finally gone mad,” he told the decomposed Oni corpse, “I’m genuinely considering eating you.”

“ _Finally!”_

Goro almost leapt out of his skin at that familiar, high-pitched voice, hunching onto all fours as he whipped his head to the source of the voice: the Pixie from his very first day here, fluttering without a care in the world and giving him a very unimpressed look. 

“You’re the slowest demon I’ve ever met, and that’s including my master,” the Pixie sighed, kicking back in the air like she was sitting on an invisible chair, “That’s _magatsuhi_ you’re playing with there, and it’s how demons get stronger. You’re _supposed_ to eat it. Ugh, you’ve wasted so much of the stuff...” 

“Sorry,” Goro said acidly, pretending his heart wasn’t currently thumping somewhere in his throat, “It wasn’t as if I was handed a fucking _manual_ on my new existence.” 

Pixie rolled her eyes, “Duh, that’s what _instinct’s_ all for, dummy! And you go ignoring it. Ugh, human stubbornness, at its worst!” 

Goro rocked back onto his heels, resting his forearms on his knees. Despite Pixies being the weakest of Shadows, he still had that “ _danger danger danger!”_ sense from this Pixie _demon,_ so he bit down on his sparking temper to the point his temples throbbed.

“Right,” he said stiffly and, through sheer force of will, clawed his Detective Prince smile from the ashes of his trembling psyche and asked; “What, exactly, is ‘magatsuhi’?”

Pixie eyed him, “That’s a psycho smile.”

Goro felt a muscle in his cheek spasm as he widened said smile into a savage grin. 

“Hoo boy,” Pixie looked amused, “You’re _really_ losing it, huh? Hahaha, that’s sooo funny!”

The demon giggled and did a cutesy flip, cupping her face between her hands as she studied Goro for a long, long moment. Her eyes gleamed bright, considering, before she finally pointed at the ‘magatsuhi’ Goro was squatting over.

“That usually comes out of humans,” she said, “But it’s a lot nicer than this. All, um, liquidy or more energy like that’s easy to drain out of them when you get your hands on them. But, getting it from other demons, it turns all yucky like this, ‘cuz the demon’s already half-digested it, y’know? So, you gotta pick it out amongst the magnetite, and it tastes all gross and nappy, but beggars can’t be choosers!”

Pixie grinned down at him, “It’s faster to get stronger by draining humans, but weaklings like you have to scavenge off of other demons instead. You gotta keep feeding your Magatama to get any stronger, loser.” 

Goro had a mild concern the muscle twitch in his jaw was going to become permanent. 

“L-Loser…” he repeated faintly. 

“Anything else you wanna know, _L-O-S-E-R?”_ Pixie simpered mockingly. 

_kill it,_ something in him snarled, but Goro held onto his temper by his mere fingertips, inhaling deep and letting it out slow. He faintly tasted ash, his chest aching with what felt like heartburn. 

He should ask where the exit to this ‘Kalpa’ is. He should ask if the Pixie knew anything about the Man in Black. He should ask how exactly a demon fought and if she had any tips on accessing the weird magic other demons could. He should ask for many things. 

Instead he asked, purely on hot-blooded impulse: “Why are you such a _bitch_?” 

“Well, that’s just rude,” Pixie sniffed, not sounded insulted in the slightest, “See if I help you anymore.” 

And before Goro could even scramble for an insincere apology, she vanished with another cutesy flip and a parting; “ _bye, loser!”_

Fuck. 

* * *

The _magatsuhi_ tasted like shit. 

He meant that literally: it _tasted_ like _literal shit._

But Goro was bull-headed and stubborn, so he choked as much of the disgusting crap down. He only managed a few handfuls before the rest of the Oni’s corpse disintegrated into a hazy vapour and diffused into the air, much to the relief of his scraped raw throat. Yet, while those few handfuls had been absolute _agony_ to swallow down, Goro had to admit he felt… better?

He felt _something._

Less heavy, more energetic? It was like getting a super potent shot of espresso, though the effects were already beginning to dwindle as he swallowed the lingering, foul taste out of his mouth, wiping his lips clean with the back of his hand. Even his markings, whose glow had been dulling recently, looked brighter. 

Somewhere inside his skull, he felt _that thing_ give a pleased wriggle before settling. It was the most disconcerting sensation ever, even if it didn’t hurt. Like feeling gentle fingers press inside his grey matter, featherlight and ticklish, a flutter of _nice-satisfaction-good_ trailing on the heels of his conscious thoughts. 

Goro shuddered, scraping his fingers through his hair as he rose, unsteadily, to his feet. For his own sanity, he was ignoring that. 

But, this magatsuhi revelation… it was _good,_ awful taste aside. He had some semblance of a goal to work towards parallel to getting the _fuck_ out of here. He’ll continue ambushing these weaklings, devour them, get stronger to devour _stronger_ demons, meaning higher gains, and get stronger and stronger and _stronger_ until the other demons cowered from _him_ like scared rats. 

And, perhaps, along the way, he’ll figure out how to use his Persona again. 

The worst thing was he could still _feel_ them. Robin Hood, Loki, _and_ Hereward, the true reflections of his withered heart, sitting heavy like sizzling coals behind his sternum. Loki’s rage eclipsed the other two, though, the hissing thought of _this is **bullshit** _and _why only **me**_ and _when I get my hands on Maruki I’ll_ -

Rage. So much rage, it tasted like tar on his tongue, made his pulse thump red-hot in his ears and his fingers curl into claws. It made him feel like the demon he supposedly was, even if it was an emotion so utterly _human._ Savage, wild, all-consuming - human. He wanted to snap the suffocating feeling over his knee and grind it into dust beneath his heel, to have it _stop_ -

But it won’t, because it is him, and so long as Goro carried his human heart this rage would follow him eternally. He just needed to figure out a new way to vent it, as Loki was locked behind his clenched fangs as a scream never to be voiced. 

Goro inhaled and exhaled, that faint aftertaste of ash lingering. 

If his Persona are locked inside of him, but demons can inherently use magic, then could he, maybe, use his demonic body as a medium to channel their abilities…?

He stowed that theory away to try another time, rolling his neck as he eyed the endless hallway he was in. Much like Mementos they shuffled themselves around frequently, sometimes looping him back on himself - but occasionally he found himself in some random chamber with a non-homicidal demon or apathetic ghost occupying it. They were never very talkative or coherent, though, so Goro’s increasingly desperate conversation starters never went anywhere. _Pixie_ was the closest thing he had to social interaction in however the fuck long he’d been here.

…

Well, and that Man in Black, but Goro wasn’t thinking about him right now. 

“Demon cannibalism first,” he told himself, shunting aside those useless thoughts and focusing on the task at hand, “I need to find more weaklings.” 

And… eat them. Ugh, he wasn’t looking forward to this. 

_just another traumatic thing to stuff under the bed,_ he told himself wryly, _nothing new._

* * *

**_Meanwhile, in the deepest part of Amala…_ **

“I like your new face.”

“Thank you,” Lucifer said, smiling warmly at his guest over his cup of coffee. This face of his was well-suited for gentle smiles, he found, but just as easily it could twist into an arrogant grin, a duality he quite liked. No wonder the newborn Fiend was so smitten with it. 

His not-so-newborn Fiend did not seem as smitten. _Naoki_ looked awkward, in fact, seated on the plush armchair of Lucifer’s, heh, _home,_ the staged sitting room out on display for all of Amala to admire and stare after hungrily. Only a scant few could be granted the honour to sit across from Lucifer as an equal, and Naoki had achieved that honour a thousandfold with each Great Will he toppled. 

Yet, Naoki was such a busy Fiend, determined and filled with a bottomless hunger to snuff out newborn _kagatsuchi_. He rarely visited his benefactor, so this was indeed a rare pleasure - and suspicious. Naoki must want something from him. 

“Is the coffee not to your liking?” Lucifer inquired, indicating to Naoki’s untouched cup, “It’s legitimately human, I assure you. It’s taken from that new one’s world.”

“‘New one’...? Oh, you mean the Chiaki-guy.”

Lucifer’s gentle smile curved into a grin, “You didn’t even _learn his name_ before cursing him? Even I had better manners than that, Naoki.”

His Fiend’s gaze shuttered at the name - he despised his human name, hence why Lucifer used it as often as he could - but he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, Naoki pursed his lips, picking up the cup and giving it a suspicious sniff. Every action looked feral, poorly contained - Naoki has been spending too much time with the demons, Lucifer thought amusedly. 

“It was spur of the moment, okay?” Naoki said sulkily, “And he had one foot in the grave already, so, not like he could complain.”

There was a pause. Lucifer sipped his coffee - it was very nice, its method of brewing copied immaculately from that _LeBlanc_ \- and cast his internal gaze over his domain. The newborn Fiend had finally learned how to strengthen his _magatama_ and, oh, how _brutal._ He was outright _devouring_ his opponents instead of simply draining the _magatsuhi_ from their corpses, which was, well, _brave_. It was no secret that decomposing demons tasted like shit. 

_well, to each their own,_ Lucifer thought idly, and turned his gaze away from the ignorant child. 

“...what is his name, anyways?” Naoki finally asked. 

“Akechi Goro,” Lucifer said, “A child cursed from birth.”

Naoki made an inquiring noise. 

Lucifer wasn’t going to give him this information for free. As ever, their relationship was equal yet conditional, a push and pull. Naoki wanted, Lucifer gave, but he took in return, and so the cycle continued, until it reached a comforting plateau where it became _too_ familiar. 

Perhaps this was why Naoki stayed away for so long. It was too easy to become bored or antagonistic towards each other. 

“If you want to know more, ask the boy yourself,” Lucifer sang lightly, “Or, visit his world. It’s close to its twilight years now.”

 _That_ snagged Naoki’s attention, an unholy glitter in his eyes, “Oh? It’s close to its Conception?”

“A few more decades, perhaps a century or two,” Lucifer traced the rim of his cup with a gloved finger, “But, if he succeeds in returning to his world, who knows how that would alter the timetable…? He is very determined, and his heart…”

Lucifer lifted his gaze, his smile showing teeth, “Well, you know better than I. Chiaki, yes?”

“Yeah,” Naoki’s gaze lowered to the cup in his hands, “Hm, so, you want…?”

“It’ll be interesting to see how this Fiend develops,” Lucifer said, “Everything else is up to him. You know I take a ‘hands off’ approach in these things.”

“All too well,” Naoki said dryly, “Well, that’s fine. Pixie’s looking out for him anyways..”

Pixie was currently drinking with a few rowdy souls in the First Kalpa, not at all supervising the newborn Fiend and thoroughly enjoying herself. Lucifer made no comment on this. 

Naoki drank his coffee - he didn’t savour it, just swallowed the whole cup in three large gulps. Lucifer made a small noise at the lack of appreciation. This was _very good coffee_ (he might, actually, visit that _LeBlanc_ again). 

“By the way,” Naoki said, setting his cup down and wiping his mouth clean, “Whose face is that, anyways? It’s unusual to see you without the blond hair.”

“Oh,” Lucifer brushed his fingers across his fringe, pinching a dark curl and fidgeting with it, “Just a familiar face to put the new one at ease.”

“Right, _‘at ease’._ ”

Lucifer lowered his hand and shrugged, “Ah, you know as well as I do, Naoki…”

He set his coffee down and smiled at the wavering reflection he saw in the dark surface, “With the human heart, a gentle lie such as this can be just as devastating as a blade.” 

“It’s a trap,” Naoki said flatly, having fallen for it himself, back when he was foolish and human-hearted.

“It’s a trap,” Lucifer agreed, and he winked at his Fiend, all friendly smiles, “I wonder…”

His eyes glinted crimson. 

“Will it ensnare him, as it did you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there will be quite a bit of skipping about amala, bc i doubt people want to read 100 pages of akechi killing demons in a million different ways, and bc i'm anxious to get to a. certain part. a very certain part where certain things happen. yes. hghgh 
> 
> also i wonder if i should put a warning for lucifer bc, hm, is it still shuake if the shu side is lucifer wearing your rival's face? hmmm
> 
> Anyways, for those new to Nocturne lore stuff, magatsuhi is in fact an energy source that demons thrive off of, and it comes from humans (or manikins, who are reincarnated souls of humans in the bodies of mud dolls). I've twisted a few things such as, demons can still obtain magatsuhi from other demons, but it's kind of the equivalent of sloppy seconds or eating their shit, so it's considered a 'weak demons/scavengers do this' thing. 
> 
> As Akechi is currently at the very bottom of the totem pole in Amala, he'll have to suffer the indignity of eating demons for magatsuhi (exp). Once he's out in the human world, hm, we'll see what happens won't we~


	4. Life's Meaning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it lives! okay as a warning, there is a big timeskip in this chapter, because i couldn't be bothered writing out my planned Rocky montage of goro getting stronger by devouring demons, so we've skipped ahead to where he's slowly clawed his way to the top of the food chain in the Kalpa he's in and therefore closer to him reuniting with Akira again (real Akira and not lucifer Akira). That's what we're really here for, right? demon!goro/shadowops!akira amirite

_ 02 FEB 20XX, TOKYO  _

The air was biting cold this early in February, drifting snowflakes catching on Akira’s eyelashes as he walked a long familiar route towards Jazz Jin. Kichijoji’s nightlife was beginning to pick up, businessmen fresh off work laughing and joking as they beelined for the bars and ramen stands, women dressed up and boisterous, young students tentatively hanging around the cinema, curiously eyeing the adults striding past. 

Akira was one of those adults now. Five years - had it really been five years since he had toppled a god and said goodbye to his better - and worst - half?

Normally, Akira tried not to be so melancholy about all that. The past was the past, and he had spent the last few years wading out of the thorny, grasping underbrush called grief, boxing up the memories and hopes about Goro inside a tender portion of his heart. The Shadow Operatives had helped - Akira liked being useful, and they kept him busy - but there were some days where he couldn’t quite shake it off. 

Like today. The second of February. 

“Can’t you walk faster?” Morgana whined, his little kitten nose prodding against the nape of his neck, “I’m freezing here!”

“Sorry,” he said, lengthening his strides. Morgana grumbled, hunkering back down into the Monabag. He was getting on in years now, his muzzle becoming streaked with silver and his gait becoming more stiff, yet still he insisted on accompanying Akira everywhere, no matter how dangerous. 

_ (“We’re partners!” Morgana had huffed when Akira had asked if he would be happier staying with Futaba, “I have enough years in me left to keep watching your back, Joker!”) _

He reached Jazz Jin not long after that, and he went through the ritual of saying hello to Muhen, the owner who always got a sad, knowing smile whenever Akira came round on this day. As usual, Akira got the quiet table in the corner, with the best view of the singer stage, Goro’s favourite drink in hand, and simply soaked up the ambiance. Morgana was curled up on his lap, sleeping and giving him privacy. 

Five years since Goro vanished after the destruction of Maruki’s Palace. 

There were two halves of him that believed two different things. The Shadow Operatives had done their own investigation as well - a missing Wildcard, especially one that had committed several assassinations, was important to track down - but nothing had turned up. The remnants of the Metaverse had collapsed into the Sea of Souls, and, Mitsuru had told him with sympathetic solemnity, no human could survive that. None. 

All evidence pointed towards Goro being dead. Yet, still, a part of him… 

He still kept the glove. He used to carry it around with him, but one dangerous mission almost had it getting damaged, so now Akira kept it under his pillow. It was probably weird, but the only person who knew to judge him for it was Morgana, and his friend kindly said nothing about it. 

“You’re taking your time coming back, Goro,” Akira sighed, idly stirring his drink, “Where've you gone...?”

No reply. Obviously. 

Akira sighed again and sipped his drink. When he was close to finishing it, his phone buzzed from an incoming message. He checked it. 

**M.K:** I’m sorry for interrupting you on this day. 

**M.K:** But a situation has arisen within Shibuya. As one of the few closest, I ask if you can investigate asap. 

**M.K:** Two others will meet you by Shibuya Station. They will give you the details. 

**M.K:** Thank you. 

A situation? It was unlike Mitsuru to be so vague. 

“C’mon, Mona,” Akira said, gently patting his cat on the rump, “Duty calls.”

“Huh, wha…? Really,  _ today?” _ Morgana groaned, but he let Akira gently put him back into the Monabag. Akira carefully shouldered it, nodding at Muhen as he passed the club owner by. The temperature had plummeted further during his time in the jazz club, the gentle snowflakes turning into a thick flurry. 

Morgana stayed huddled in the bag all the way to Shibuya, where Futaba and Makoto met him with anxious frowns. 

“It’s another demon domain,” Makoto said after they exchanged brief pleasantries, “Well, multiple ones. They’re small but...”

“It's more than usual,” Akira finished.

“It’s like a mob rush of domains,” Futaba said, her gaze mostly fixed on her workpad. The screen glittered with numbers and symbols Akira had no hope of working out, though he recognised the small icon of the Demon Summoning Programme winking cheekily in the top corner, “Doesn’t matter if they’re all  _ trash mobs, _ it’s still wearing us down.” 

“I’m uneasy at how these are becoming more and more frequent,” Makoto said, adjusting her brass knuckled gloves anxiously, “Before, demon sightings were extremely rare and mostly handled by the Kuzunoha Group. Now…”

“Yeah, the demon sightings have exploded over the last few months,” Futaba mumbled, “Readings have been going  _ crazy _ ever since the New Year too. Maybe the Expanse has shifted closer? I dunno. The Kuzunoha are being so  _ stingy _ with their secrets - and it’s all written down on  _ ye olde scrolls! _ You can’t hack scrolls!” 

“I’m sure they’ll start sharing once they realise we’re getting overwhelmed,” Akira said, “For now, let’s deal with those domains before they become a problem.” 

“Aye, aye, Joker,” Futaba sighed, stowing her workpad away. 

It was a little like being the Phantom Thieves again, except there was no Treasure to steal and no hearts to teach guilt. Instead it was diving into the slimy, grotesque Palaces of demons, the alien entities slowly but surely encroaching on their world with hungry eyes and a mindless determination. The pressing matter of dealing with multiple domains helped him neatly put aside his melancholy mood for now. 

He can grieve Goro later. 

* * *

_ TIME IS DEAD, AMALA _

In what felt like eons ago, Wakaba Isshiki likened the Metaverse to a simulation. 

To a certain point, it wasn’t real. The Metaverse was a physical manifestation of cognitive thought, biological computations fed into a processor that could craft it into interactable constructs. It wasn’t real, but there is a point where the difference between ‘not real’ and ‘real’ blur - where such a distinction rests within the cognition of the observer. 

Amala wasn’t ‘real’, but it was ‘real’. It existed beyond the boundary of human interaction, beyond their conceptualisation - cognition - but it existed for the demons, and Goro, and their minds ran the computations that ran on something higher than biological. The processor crafted these computations into interactable constructs, nudged and aligned to the administrator’s will. Where did the line blur here? Amala, Tokyo, Metaverse - they were simulations within simulations, running concurrently and within each other, a mobius strip that fed inwards and outwards. 

Wakaba told Goro: ‘imagine a scientist were able to simulate pain by inducing only a few neurons to fire; no physical harm. ‘I am in pain!’ the subject says. ‘No, you only believe you are,’ says the scientist. To the scientist, the pain is not real, to the subject, it is real. Who is right?’

Who is right? Who is right? 

Separate cognitions, unreal and real, perception defines perspective, minds inform and grant truth but they are untruths and they-

Does this extend to you? 

Human, demon, perception defines perspective, 

unreal and real, 

though your body has shed its mortal shell

the heart within thumps with the molten, 

mutable soul of **human**

this is beyond observation but 

it is truth regardless but if you

walk amongst humans they see 

the **demon** and 

that is what you become 

in truth 

demon or human 

what is right 

who is right

what are

“Hey, loser.”

Goro paused, his fingers twitching against the indents of the Terminal. 

Pixie was sitting on top of the Terminal’s drum, her little feet kicking out as she curiously stared down at Goro; “You shouldn’t look too hard. It’ll fry your squishy human brain.”

“My brain isn’t human anymore,” Goro answered, but he pulled his hand away from the Terminal. 

Inert, it looked like a simple stone pillar, its grey surface pitted with spiky, alien symbols that made one’s gaze slide away without conscious thought. Beneath that though, in the heart of the Terminal, lay a strand that led to the greater flow of data that comprised everything in this universe: the Amala Network. The code that ran Existence and ordered everything into helpful little nodes and computations, open to be read and crafted by unseen hands. 

“But you still  _ think _ like a human,” Pixie said, “Your thoughts are too humany still.”

“What counts as ‘too humany’?” Goro mocked lightly, scratching his fingernails against the Terminal. They were dark crimson and slightly pointed, like miniature claws. That happened at some point he couldn’t remember. More demon than human now, after consuming his fill of them. 

“Being short-sighted,” Pixie said simply, “And toooootally shameless. You humans are always wanting to know the meaning of your lives, and end up breaking your brains when you realise you don’t have one.”

“They have meaning,” Goro said defensively, “It’s just… very abstract.”

“Like I said, no meaning,” Pixie said impishly, and pushed off the Terminal to do lazy flips above Goro’s head, “Humans just drift along, getting used as pawns or food by their betters! Heehee, you’re all just glorified cattle!”

Goro ignored her. After a while, he learned she was only trying to get a rise out of him for her own amusement. He clawed at the Terminal again, the whispers of knowledge and revelations it gave him, and turned away. 

It wasn’t a travelling nexus, like Pixie had implied it was. Some Terminals allowed travel along the Amala Network by warping space and time in ways he couldn’t make heads or tails of, but most were just data repositories. While interesting, the knowledge didn’t give him the exit point he needed to flee Amala and get back to Tokyo,  _ his _ Tokyo. 

Yeah, there were multiple Tokyos, the majority of which had been transformed into battlegrounds between angels and demons.  _ That  _ had been  _ fun _ to discover, that it was only a matter of time until  _ his _ Tokyo came into the crosshairs. 

As if guessing the direction of his thoughts, Pixie said slyly; “You could ask it about your world.”

Goro scowled and lunged upwards in a wild swipe. Pixie shrieked with laughter and easily darted out of reach, doing a mocking little dance where she wiggled her tiny rump at him.

“Too slow, too slow~” she sang, before flipping him the bird and vanishing in a burst of sparkles. 

“Bitch,” Goro snarled, glowering at the spot the little menace had been. One day he’ll get fast enough to catch her, then he’ll snap her head off like a  _ doll’s  _ and  _ eat it. _

But that day was not today - or night, or whatever - and he turned back to the Terminal with a small frown. As much as it pained him to admit it, Pixie had a point. He  _ could _ ask the Terminal about his Tokyo - it may not allow him access to the path to  _ get _ there, but it should know about it, right? How much time had passed, how it was, if it was still in one fucking piece, and if Akira was still… 

Slowly, Goro reached out, the tips of his dark crimson claws touching the Terminal’s drum. The symbols glowed softly and- 

-he snatched his hand away before his query could be answered, angrily shaking his head. 

“Too human,” he muttered under his breath,  _ growling _ it, and left the Terminal behind without a backwards glance. 

* * *

If asked, Goro wouldn’t be able to say how much time had passed since he arrived in Amala. 

He marked it, sort of, with something physical like the length of his hair. Despite his face being unageing, his hair still grew. It now reached somewhere around mid-back, gathered up into a rough ponytail from some twine he had wrestled from a Lachesis in an effort to keep it out of his eyes. The hair was a nightmare - it was thicker than it should be, tougher than normal, like a mane, but he didn’t dare try to cut it in an attempt to make it manageable. 

Amala didn’t have professional hairdressers, and he was vain enough to endure a shamefully long ponytail over a poor hack-job. If he was spending eternity here, he’d rather it’d not be with a shitty haircut. 

But while Goro wasn’t sure how his hair growth translated into actual time, it  _ was  _ enough for him to understand that he had spent  _ too long _ in Amala. Way too long, with nothing to show for it but a bunch of useless existential knowledge and a non-consensual tattoo job. It was enough to make even the most stubborn of souls demoralised. 

“All I’m asking for is one tiny little break, just one,” Goro told his meal, a Yatagarasu that unwisely didn’t flee the second it saw the dreaded ‘Godeater’. He was privately chuffed at the epithet, in all honesty. Better than Black Mask, “I don’t want to be here,  _ you _ don’t want me here, so why not kick me out back to my world?”

The Yatagarasu said nothing, since it was headless and all, its body slowly decomposing into that magnetite and digested magatsuhi slurry. Goro shoved a handful into his mouth, choking it down. 

“Exactly, it makes sense,” he huffed after he swallowed, long used to making his own conversation in a desperate attempt to simulate social interaction, “Just let me leave.”

The unmoving bird corpse began to dissolve. 

“Or you leave, I guess,” Goro said flippantly, watching the remains of his meal evaporate into  _ magatsuhi _ and disperse into the rest of Amala, “Rude.” 

Nothing answered him. 

Goro stayed sitting on the floor, idly licking his fingers clean. His surroundings were dull and dreary, like everywhere on this Kalpa, but he could sit out in the open unchallenged now. He didn’t have to cower in the shadows anymore like some timid mouse, though there were a few demons he warily avoided. Luckily those threats remained in their own little territories and paid him no mind. 

“I miss food,” he mumbled, wiping his hand on his torn Metaverse pants and standing up, “Actual  _ food. _ I’d kill for a custard tart right now. Or a coffee. Leblanc coffee with Akira’s curry-”

“I can give you some.”

Goro lashed out without thinking, his claws striking out at the voice that purred right into his ear. Cheerful, gut-wrenchingly familiar laughter echoed when his would-be ambusher easily side-stepped the strike that would’ve torn out his throat, his funeral veil fluttering enough to glimpse a peek of a sparkling grey eye. 

“Your reflexes are getting better,” the Man in Black appraised, smiling at Goro’s snarl. He held up a small picnic basket and a thermos, so out of place in Amala that it startled Goro into blank staring, “I bring you gifts.”

“What,” Goro said flatly. 

“It’s a reward for being so entertaining to my master,” the Man in Black continued, “And for surviving in such an inhospitable place. Do you take milk and sugar with your coffee?”

“I… what?” Goro repeated. 

But the Man in Black was already laying out the picnic basket where the Yatagarasu corpse had been moments before. Goro didn’t know where he got the blanket from - soft blue and green argyle that was definitely an open mockery of him - complete with a cheerful cat-patterned mug for the coffee. The Man in Black was immune to his cautious staring. 

And Goro  _ was _ cautious. He did not forget his first meeting with the Man in Black where he had taken the form of a serpent and almost  _ bit his arm off _ , and he didn’t forget that the sporadic meetings after that had been equally disorientating and confusing. The Man in Black sometimes helped him - pointing him towards the Terminals, giving him helpful hints about his new demonic status and the world he was now trapped in - and sometimes he didn’t, merely observing while Goro floundered and flailed. 

All while wearing that fucking  _ face. _

It was a manipulation tactic, clearly, but Goro had no idea what the man  _ wanted.  _ He made no demands on him except to survive and be entertaining, and something inside Goro bristled at the idea of being reduced to some fucking dancing monkey kept alive for some being’s amusement. No. This manipulation and his demonification had to have  _ meaning. _

_ (“You humans are always wanting to know the meaning of your lives, and end up breaking your brains when you realise you don’t have one.”) _

There  _ was _ a meaning to this!

“Come on, I haven’t poisoned any of this,” the Man in Black tutted, seated neatly on the edge of the blanket. He patted the empty space next to him, his mouth curved into a charming Joker-smile, “Not that poisoning you would work, being what you are.”

Goro hesitated, but the smell of coffee and curry was too tempting to ignore. He warily crept closer, like a skittish prey animal under the eye of a greater predator. 

“What I am,” he repeated. 

The Man in Black merely smiled at him, saying nothing. 

Tensely, Goro squatted down on the edge of the picnic blanket, coiled tight like a spring ready to fly loose at the slightest sign of threat. When the Man in Blank remained calmly in place, Goro snagged the picnic basket and dragged it closer to him, not letting his wary gaze leave his… companion for a second. 

“You’re like a little mouse cowering in the shadow of a serpent,” the Man in Black said with a little grin, “Are you frightened, Crow?”

“Shut up,” Goro snapped, “I’d be stupid to let my guard down around you.”

“Mhm, you would,” the Man in Black confirmed. 

Goro gave the Man in Black one last glower, before peering into the basket. There was a bowl of curry, still hot when he gingerly lifted it out, with a collection of spoons and forks at the bottom of the basket. There was also some assortment of cakes and biscuits, like the Man in Black wasn’t sure which one he liked so just grabbed a whole bunch. 

“You got my favourite curry and coffee pinned down, but not the biscuits?” he asked, admittedly confused why this unknown entity was going to such lengths. 

The Man in Black sighed, “Though it may be hard for you to grasp, I  _ do _ have a life outside of you, Crow. I can’t waste time digging through all the lies and masks you wore as a human to pin down your favourite  _ biscuit.” _

Goro  _ ‘hrm’d _ . 

“For future reference, it’s custard creams,” he said, and found himself relaxing despite himself. Though he couldn’t feel hunger anymore, the smell of curry when he peeled back the clingfilm stimulated something close to it. A craving so intense it took effort to use the spoon and not his damn  _ hands _ to eat it. 

Compared to the pungnent shit taste of demons, tasting Akira’s curry again was a fucking religious experience. 

He licked the bowl clean. 

“My, someone was hungry,” the Man in Black said after Goro all but inhaled the curry, “Are the demons not satisfying?”

“They taste like  _ shit,” _ Goro coughed, setting the bowl aside and picking up the cat-patterned mug. He held it awkwardly, his claws gently tapping against the ceramic, “And it’s like swallowing sand.”

“Hmm, yes, demon cannibalism is unpleasant,” the Man in Black said slowly. He looked as if he was about to add more, but smiled instead, baring sharp fangs. 

“Crow,” the Man in Black said, “You’ve come quite far since our first meeting. Back then you were a lost child, crying into the dark about his own helplessness and loneliness. Now you’ve become a predator in your own right, and have vastly outgrown this Kalpa. Almost all of the demons fear you, and I think it’s time you push your boundaries a little.”

Goro paused with the rim of his cup pressed against his bottom lip, his eyebrows raised. 

The Man in Black continued to smile, “There is a specific place you avoid, isn’t there? A powerful demon lurks there, and he guards the exit to this Kalpa. I think you’re strong enough to challenge and defeat him.”

“Who is this demon?” Goro asked warily, lowering his cup.

“Beelzebub,” the Man in Black answered, “The Lord of the Flies.” 

Goro wrinkled his nose slightly. He had fought a Beelzebub before in Shadow form, and he had no idea if the demon version matched up. So far his experience has been that the demon version was vastly superior to the Shadow version in every way; “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s beginning to get dull, with how easily you’re devouring the demons here,” the Man in Black said simply, “It’s time to cut your fangs on something with more meat. Beelzebub is a powerful demon, and I’m sure his strength will add significantly to yours if you successfully devour him.” 

Goro was tempted. More power meant…

“You will also be one step closer to freedom,” the Man in Black added slyly, “The Kalpa above this has a travelling nexus you can use to escape to your Tokyo, if that’s still your goal.” 

“...fine,” Goro said, temptation overriding caution “I’ll fight Beelzebub.” 

“Good,” the Man in Black’s fanged smile softened into something more human, “Very good. I’ll reward you with another bowl of curry once you win.”

“Once I win,” Goro repeated, “You’re so certain of my success?”

“I’ve never doubted you, Crow,” the Man in Black said, sounding so earnestly like Akira for a moment it felt gutting, “I trust you’ll win.”

Goro said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to speak. 

“Good luck,” the Man in Black finished, and between one blink and the next, he was gone, the only sign of his existence being the little picnic he had set up. Goro stared at the space he had been, and mechanically sipped his coffee, barely tasting it. 

He needed to get out of here. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the scientist quote and the concept behind simulation within simulations is from assassin's creed: valhalla! it fit this whole simulation talk so i nabbed it heheh
> 
> anyway for those of you who have fought beelzebub in smt: nocturne, yes, it's going to be terrible and gross and there's gonna be way too many flies.
> 
> (also check out this amazing fanart of [demi-fiend goro by peccatoact-metanoia](https://peccatoact-metanoia.tumblr.com/post/625369109301018624/brain-and-body-doing-whatever-they-want-again-haha)! it's very very good!!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hell take us, heaven can wait](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468812) by [KivaEmber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber)




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